Sinners is the latest from one of the best young directors out there, Ryan Coogler. Since he broke onto the scene a decade ago with Fruitvale Station (which also was the film breakout for Michael B Jordan, who would continue to star in Cooglar’s films like Creed and Black Panther), the director has been very consistent. Jordan is back for Sinners too, in which he has a duel role as twin brothers Smoke and Stack. In the year 1932, they are lately returned to their hometown of Clarksdale, MS, after having run afoul of gangsters in Chicago. The brothers have a plan to set up a juke joint just outside the town, and quickly recruit musicians, bartenders, door security, and suppliers of food and drink. Coming home has brought reunions too though, including ex-girlfriends and baby mommas, which provide some drama for the evening. As if they need any! One of the musicians, young Sammie, is a talented guitarist whose music is so powerful that it can call spirits, and as he plays, his music transcends time and space, and we see dancers from years past and future (American Indians and 60s hippies) engage on the dance floor with everyone else. The powerful tunes draw unwanted guests too, as a vampire near the area is pulled towards the revelers. The rest of the night becomes a cat and mouse game, as the vampire grows his army outside the venue, biding his time until the partiers make a mistake and invite him in. What starts as a gripping drama becomes a supernatural horror film, with plenty of gore to satisfy the grisly minded. I usually save my 4+ ratings for those movies that I’d rewatch, and while this probably isn’t a film I’d return to (once all the surprises are out, not sure how much fun it’d be the second time through), it’s a really good film that is definitely worth watching. ★★★★
The Actor is another good one, and an entirely different kind of movie. Buoyed by the talents of lead André Holland as Paul Cole, it is about a man who awakens in an Ohioan city in the 1950s with full-on amnesia, absolutely no memory of who he is or how he got there. The hospital staff tells him that he is an actor, and was brought in by his fellow acting troupe after it was discovered that he (Paul) was sleeping with one of their wives. They roughed him over pretty well, causing his amnesia, and then abandoned him. All that Paul knows is the troupe hailed from New York. Once he is healed, Paul is run out of town by the constable, as adultery is a serious crime at the time, but without enough money to make it back to New York, he settles into a little town further up the rail line. There, he meets Edna, a very nice unassuming woman who is the first kind face he’s come across. She urges him to forget whoever he used to be and stay there with her, but that gnawing curiosity makes Paul take the trip to NY to find out who he is. He may not like the answers. The film is very “artsy” with some slick camera tricks, and written in a way that makes the viewer sometimes feel as confused as Paul, with scenes that end and merge with each other suddenly, so that it is hard to get a grip on what is sometimes happening. We feel just as unsure and confused as Paul! In the hands of a less skillful actor, the movie could have been a real mess, but Holland brings us along and pulls it off. ★★★★
The Shrouds is the latest from renowned director David Cronenberg, forefather of the body horror genre. This newest is more of the same, and while not his best, it is an enjoyable film if you are into the weird shit. Vincent Cassel stars as Karsh, who has been unable to get over the recent death of his wife Becca (Diane Kruger). As such, he has invented a technology where he can bury a person in a high-tech shroud, and allow their surviving family to see the decomposing body on their phone (or even a view screen on the grave’s headstone). Becca’s sister Terry (also played by Kruger) knows Karsh is hurting, and while giving a shoulder to cry on, the two become close. This is to the chagrin of Terry’s ex-husband Maury (Guy Pearce, who always seems to find good roles), who happens to be the techie code writer for Karsh’s shrouds. One day, someone hacks Karsh’s system, preventing access to the video feeds, and shortly after, he is approached by a woman who wants to put one of his high-tech graveyards in Budapest. Then the AI personal assistant that Karsh reacts with constantly (who shares a voice with Becca/Terry and has been written to look like his dead wife) starts behaving strangely, and then Maury comes to him with a wild tale about Russian hackers and Chinese mobsters. Through all of this, Karsh is having dreams about his dead wife, dreams that are growing increasingly disturbing about the cancer that destroyed her body, even while she began an affair with her doctor near the end of her life. Like I said, weird shit. I really liked it all the way through, but the ending was weird (or, weirder, anyway). ★★★½
There’s a lot of tales of atrocity and bravery out of World War II that many, myself included, have never heard. One such story is of the Chełmno extermination camp in Poland, and the 1942 escape from the camp by two Jewish men. In The World Will Tremble, a group of men have already been in the camp for some time. They are young and able-bodied, and have been tasked with burying the mass amounts of dead that the camp produces every day. They see tragedy every day, such as one day when one of the men pulls a woman off the truck and finds that it is his wife, and next to her, their daughter. He begs the Germans to shoot him, so that he may join his family, but they refuse, stating the he still have enough strength to do more work (for now). These Jewish men together have a plan though: to escape out of a transport one day, where there are usually just a handful of German guards, and run through the woods to a nearby town that still has an unliquidated Jewish Ghetto. Rumor has it that a rabbi there has ties to the underground, where the men hope to smuggle messages and get the word out about these new death camps, both to warn Jews and to tell the world at large for support. The men care nothing for themselves, and only want to do what they can to save others. It’s a tremendous film about the courage of man when faced with unthinkable brutality. ★★★★★
A Working Man is the latest teamup from director David Ayer (whose hit and misses are well chronicled) and Jason Statham; the two did last year’s The Beekeeper, which I enjoyed a bit. In this film, Statham plays Levon, an ex-special teams operative trying to live a simple life as a construction foreman. He’s employed by the Garcia’s in their family owned business, and is called in for some “overtime” when daughter Jenny is kidnapped by the Russian mob, a victim of being a pretty face in the wrong place at the wrong time. Levon doesn’t initially want to get involved, but he owes much to Joe Garcia and the money Joe is offering would help him personally, to get more time with his young daughter, currently living with her grandfather (Levon’s dead wife’s father, who is not so caring of Levon’s situation). As Levon goes undercover and hunts down mob boss after mob boss, the body count rises, and so does Levon’s peril. Statham is good; after all, he’s got this kind of role down pat, but everything else about this movie is so bad that he can’t make up for it all alone. Cheesy dialogue, throw-noodles-against-the-wall-to-see-what-sticks kind of plot twists, and just downright bad acting (even from stalwarts like Michael Peña) make me think that everyone was just showing up for a paycheck on this one. Whole lot of eyerolls. ★½
- TV series recently watched: The Chosen (season 5), Justice League Unlimited (seasons 1-3), Poker Face (season 2)
- Book currently reading: Aftermath: The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese
Jons Movie Takes 